


Reunited

by ams75



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Other, Post-Series, RipFic, TimeShip, Timeship Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 12:07:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12298917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ams75/pseuds/ams75
Summary: Set post-series (I'm arbitrarily giving Legends of Tomorrow seven or eight seasons) Rip and Gideon are reunited.  But where's the team?





	Reunited

**Author's Note:**

  * For [IncendiaGlacies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IncendiaGlacies/gifts).



> Thank you so much, O Nameless One for the encouragement to write and for reading and keeping me on track in general with fics.
> 
> Thank you, Drogna, really appreciate the editing, pointing out typos, fixing some punctuation, where I can try to clarify something.
> 
> Lastly, but never least, thank you to IncendiaGlacies for thinking up TimeShip Week and coming up with a prompt for each day. This will be my second complete fic for it, probably never would have started my A.U. of an A.U. without it and definitely wouldn't have started the other W.I.P.

That can't be right, Gideon thought sluggishly, the circuitry unused for... she wasn't sure how long. The ship was in darkness, not even the dimmed lighting for the sleep cycle of... she couldn't think of whom she meant. This was an impenetrable black.  
  
Her sensors picked up a strange gait, two footsteps and something else coming into contact with the floor as every other foot landed on the metal.  
  
She wanted to alert... who? This set of footsteps weren't familiar to her.  
  
"Gideon?"  
  
She hadn't heard that voice this close to her for... years, she thought.  
  
She tried to speak but nothing really came out except some whirs and clicks and beeps. Had that really been her?  
  
The man, whose voice she still couldn't name, apparently thought so for he said, "No, don't try to speak yet, Gideon, I still have a few connections left to make. Is it possible for you to bring up some lights?"  
  
She directed her attention inward and followed the well-worn paths as far as she was able, then stopped for a few hundredths of a second as she reached new territory. She entered cautiously and in forty-five seconds, disastrously slow in her opinion, the lights on the bridge began to come up.  
  
As they did, she was now able to make out the man's features. If the infrared sensors had been working, she would have known exactly who this was when she'd first heard him.  
  
He looked almost the same as she remembered him, maybe a grey hair or two adorned his head and was that another wrinkle on his forehead? His green eyes gleamed as brilliantly as ever in the light.  
  
**********  
  
Rip placed the metal pipe against the wall; he'd allowed it to hit the deck as he walked just to create some noise. It still unnerved him how quiet the _Waverider_ was. The first thing he had done when he'd found her was open the cargo bay door and leave it open until he had life support up and running.  
  
The ship itself wasn't in bad shape but Gideon... He shook his head minutely as he remembered trying to raise her, and he couldn't. It had left him shocked, then determined to fix her. He had slaved her controls to the time ship he had commandeered and flown them both back to the Vanishing Point, which was now the heart of the Time Bureau he'd created.  
  
Once there, he had handed everything at the Bureau over to his Second-in-Command, with strict instructions not to bother him unless there was an emergency.  
  
So far, he had been left alone to help the _Waverider_ repair itself. His first assessment had been wrong, but in his defense, the finely tuned, most accurate instrumentation capable of assessing what was wrong with the ship, and Gideon, was only available at the Vanishing Point.  
  
He had started work on the ship six months ago, but today was the first day he had felt that Gideon would wake up, if he chose to rouse her, before all of the repairs to her were complete. Knowing only minor tweaks were left, he had turned her on. He had left the lights off as a test for her and joy rose up and filled him as they began to brighten.  
  
"Excellent! I'll soon have you back to your proper state, don't you worry about a thing," he enthused, forgetting he shouldn't tempt fate like that.  
  
This one time, Lady Luck smiled on him and an hour later he felt that Gideon would be able to vocalize properly once more.  
  
"Gideon, who am I?"  
  
"Captain."  
  
He waited.  
  
She corrected herself. "My Captain."  
  
He couldn't help but smile at that, it had been a long time since anyone had called him that. "Yes," he agreed quietly, "but I need you to tell me my name, I'm assessing how much more work needs to be done to finish repairing you."  
  
She started to worry. "You won't be turning me off again?"  
  
"Ssh, ssh, of course not, unless it is absolutely necessary and so far, it doesn't seem to be. Now, what is my name?"  
  
"Captain." He could almost see the connections trying to route the information through her. "Hunter. Captain Rip Hunter."  
  
"Excellent!"  
  
He gently questioned her about their earliest time together and made notes when she couldn't answer, or had partial answers, or the data had been corrupted, like the baffling information that he had impersonated Cleopatra in 2455 in Iran. He sort of wished that he had and wondered what had been corrupted to get to that mishmash of data. He was a time traveller and he supposed it might have, barely, been possible that it happened but she told him he had been twenty-five when it had.  He hadn't been that age for a couple of decades now, give or take a few years.  
  
It was another month before he had restored Gideon as much as was possible. She was aware that some of her memories had been restored, some had been fabricated so the gaps wouldn't upset her, and some were unrecoverable.  
  
At the end of the first day she was back with him, as he installed the pipe along the wall to act as a safety bar, she asked, "Will you be returning home soon?"  
  
"No need for that."  
  
"I beg your pardon?"  
  
"This is my home, if you'll have me."  
  
He had begun to wonder if he had somehow inadvertently offended her when she said, "It would be more efficient if you remained on board--"  
  
"--for the repairs, of course," he said gravely, only a slight twitch of his lips gave him away. "Yes, I thought that as well."  
  
The month had flown by and as her memory improved so had everything else. The water temperature when he showered became welcoming instead of merely tolerable, she had resumed nagging him to eat and preparing meals for him and best of all, their late night conversations resumed. Anything and everything was covered as questions occurred to either of them and answers were as forthcoming as possible. She knew there were times he lied, in the belief it would protect her, and she withheld information that wasn't vital when she was of the opinion it would be hurtful for him to hear.  
  
"There," he said as he placed the screwdriver back into his tool kit, "I think it's time for a test flight, don't you?"  
  
"Yes, Captain."  
  
"Would you like the honour?"  
  
"Perhaps it would be better if you take the controls," she said, doubting herself.  
  
"Are you sure? I could be ready to take over if something happens."  
  
"Next time I will."  
  
"Well, all right then." He hid his worry as he sat down in the now unfamiliar pilot's chair.  
  
"Captain Lance won't like that," Gideon said.  
  
"Sorry?" he asked, pausing mid pre-flight routine.  
  
"What?" Gideon asked.  
  
"You said something."  
  
"Yes, next time I will."  
  
"No," Rip said, "after that."  
  
"I didn't say anything."  
  
He reversed the switches he had flipped and sat back in the chair. "Gideon, run a self-diagnosis."  
  
"Why?" she asked, suspicious.  
  
"Because you said something to me and you apparently don't remember it." They hadn't talked much about the team as that portion of her memory had been badly damaged, but she knew who they were, although not what had happened since he had last crossed paths with them. He had thanked her for her updates to him about what they were doing and, indeed, it had been the sudden cessation of them that had sent him searching for her.  
  
"If you insist."  
  
"I do."  
  
Half an hour later she said, "As I expected, all systems are in working order. You must have been hearing things."  
  
He leaned forward. "Gideon, record us. Allow searches for keywords when playing back."  
  
"Recording."  
  
He stood up and walked a few steps away, then returned to the pilot's chair and sat down, He began the pre-flight routine.  
  
"Captain Lance won't like that."  
  
"There! That!"  
  
"What?" Gideon asked, confused.  
  
"Stop recording, then play it back."  
  
"Yes, Captain." They listened as he walked across the deck and back, then a burst of white noise, then Rip's triumphant cry, "There! That!"  
  
"Gideon, what happened? Why was there interference in the recording?"  
  
"I don't know, Captain." He could hear the worry in her voice.  
  
"Cancel the flight test, we're getting to the bottom of this." He stood up and headed to his parlour. "We're going to run and test every last one of your subroutines until we have an answer, Gideon."  
  
Hours later, Rip was stretching when he heard a distinct glitch. Gideon denied it. "Gideon, begin recording."  
  
"All right."  
  
"Test the last two subroutines again." She did and what he heard disturbed him. She had run the third and second last one. "And the next one in sequence?"  
  
She ran the one after the subroutine he wanted. He turned on the data pad and said, "Allow manual override."  
  
"Accepting manual override, Captain."  
  
He tapped his way through the third last one, then the second last one. As he began the one he wanted, he could feel Gideon resisting it. "Gideon, I need your co-operation."  
  
"I am, Captain!" she protested.  
  
"You're not aware--" He was cut off as he wrestled the last bit with the data pad and it executed.  
  
"Rip Hunter, about time!" Miss Lance sounded annoyed. "Don't have much time, but I knew you'd run through all the glitches and discover this. We're in trouble and, sorry, no idea where we are. Find us."  
  
The message stopped.  
  
"Gideon, did you hear that?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Do you remember now telling me 'Captain Lance won't like that' when I sat in the pilot's chair and began our pre-flight sequence?"  
  
"Captain, I believe that was somehow implanted to get your attention."  
  
"As do I, Gideon, as do I. Mr. Jackson and Miss Lance must have worked together to leave that message."  
  
He stood up and grabbed the data pad and ran back to the pilot's chair, this time finishing the pre-flight routine. The engines started and he gently lifted the _Waverider_ up. "Gideon, search the timeline for anomalies, eliminate past missions of the team that I'm aware of and we'll investigate what's left."  
  
"Yes, Captain."  
  
The test flight was short and without incident. As they neared their docking berth he said, "Gideon, take the controls, land us."  
  
"But Captain--"  
  
"Do it."  
  
"Captain."  
  
After they landed perfectly, he said, "Analyse all data collected while we were airborne and calculate the odds of us surviving and continuing with all systems functioning should we jump into the temporal zone."  
  
He was halfway to his quarters when she said, "Everything is within normal parameters, Captain. We should be in no more danger than usual."  
  
"I was hoping you'd say that." He walked into his quarters and changed as he murmured, "I do have an image to maintain, after all."  
  
Soon, he returned to the flight deck, with his once familiar long coat draped over his still slender frame. He was wearing jeans and an old shirt and jacket under the coat.  
  
"Gideon, how many possibilities have you discovered for where the team might be?"  
  
"Five, Captain."  
  
He sat down on the pilot's chair and lowered the metal harness over him for protection. "Take us to our first destination."  
  
"Yes, Captain."  


**Author's Note:**

> For the purpose of this fic, Rip is mid-forties, throughout the series (even if I'm Jossed soon) Gideon has been sending Rip updates about the team, what they've been doing, who's on board, who leaves/dies/joins and Rip has been telling her of his work, the Time Bureau and so on. He's never settled on a timeship for long when he's used one, in deference to the Waverider still feeling like home even though he's away and wants Gideon to know she can never be replaced, any other ship is temporary.
> 
> Rip is back permanently and after he finds the team (Sara, Jax, Ray, Mick, a somehow rescued from his death in 1x15 Leonard Snart and if Martin Stein is killed off during the show's run, he too is somehow brought back to life just prior to the team going missing) Sara will be lucky to pilot the Waverider one time in fifty, Rip has rediscovered his sheer joy of flying the Waverider and working with Gideon and being with his best friend. He runs the Time Bureau while on the ship while his Second-in-Command does the day to day work.
> 
> Thanks for reading. Kudos are cool, comments are love.


End file.
